D&D 5E (2014) Is Expertise too good?

[iserith]

Banning multicasting because expertise is to attractive to dipping is exactly the kind of distortion in talking about.

I wouldn't "ban" multiclassing because of Expertise. I wouldn't see it as a ban anyway since it's optional in the first place. If you chose not to include this optional rule in your games, would Expertise be as much of a problem?

 

[FrogReaver]

Instead of punishing the player with expertise reward them for having it as a perk. Don't artificially increase the DC's...keep the DC's as they are even if it means the player passes it easily or doesn't even have to try.

This is a PERK of their class that they choose and they should be able to enjoy this perk. Instead, let them know that even greater things are possible. Let the PLAYER decide to try to do these impossible things, and set the DC's accordingly. This is ALSO a reward of the player's class and the perk they choose. They can actually CHOOSE to try to do these impossible things and stand a chance of succeeding.

Rather than punish the player and the party by inflating existing DC's, reward them for their choices and their perks. Give the PLAYER choice and also let it be a reward where THEY CAN CHOOSE to try things not normally possible to others and enjoy the class that they chose.

That's only half the issue. It's also a fix I don't think anyone here has proposed.

 

[GM Lent]

I wouldn't "ban" multiclassing because of Expertise. I wouldn't see it as a ban anyway since it's optional in the first place. If you chose not to include this optional rule in your games, would Expertise be as much of a problem?

As someone whose games have never included the optional multiclassing rules, I can vouch for expertise not being a problem.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

That said, I think the solution is to count 1's as misses on all skill checks. Then there is no more auto success. Count 20's as auto pass and there is no more auto failure. I think that should take care of most issues.

Within reason. You don't want a situation like "Well, it's a DC 40 check to break down an adamantine portcullis with your bare hands. I'm a first-level halfling bard. But I still have a one-in-twenty chance of success, so here goes!"

 

[FrogReaver]

Within reason. You don't want a situation like "Well, it's a DC 40 check to break down an adamantine portcullis with your bare hands. I'm a first-level halfling bard. But I still have a one-in-twenty chance of success, so here goes!"

Wrong. There would be no uncertainty there and so the DM would never call for a check. As long as the DM doesn't call for checks for certain things there is no issue.

 

[Yaarel]

That said, I think the solution is to count 1's as misses on all skill checks. Then there is no more auto success. Count 20's as auto pass and there is no more auto failure. I think that should take care of most issues. If a 5% guaranteed pass / guaranteed fail rate seems to small then do 1-2 is auto miss and 19 and 20 is auto success.

Implementing skill crits and skill fumbles has the added advantage of using the same math for skills as for combat.

Combat has excellent math that has evolved over decades. It is tight and robust. There is no reason to deviate from combat math.

 

[Yaarel]

The point of the segue to a conversation about DM style, was to give an example of how vital skills are for the DM to adjudicate the freedom and improvisation of players.

Skills (and passive skills) are ubiquitous, continual, and impact the outcome of combat.

Skills are the skeleton that supports the personalities of the adventure.

To wreck the math of skills can disrupt and distort every aspect of the D&D game, from player choices to DM adjudication.

Expertise needs to respect bounded accuracy and stay true to combat math.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Wrong. There would be no uncertainty there and so the DM would never call for a check. As long as the DM doesn't call for checks for certain things there is no issue.

There is no uncertainty for any roll where a PC wouldn't have a high enough skill mod to meet the DC. The whole point of your introducing an auto-success-on-20 rule is to create uncertainty where there otherwise wouldn't be. So the question becomes: when is it appropriate to create that uncertainty and when not?

 

[77IM]

I think there is a weird urge for some to boost DCs because of Expertise. There's really no need to though, right?

Is it "boosting" the DCs or is that just the correct range of DCs? Why do 10/15/20 make a good set of go-to DCs, but 10/20/30 make a poor set of go-to DCs?


I had another insight: (and thanks for your questions, they are very helpful in sorting this out) If Expertise were much, much more common -- let's say every character had 1-2 Expert skills, and rogues had 5-6 -- it would bug me much less as a DM. In fact, as a DM, I'd just use the 10/20/30 scale and not worry too much about it. Characters would fail hard checks more often at low levels, but succeed at easy checks more often by mid levels. BUT it would bother me much, much more as a player. I would feel like, if I didn't have Expertise, a lot of checks wouldn't even be worth attempting.

For your scale, did you set those success benchmarks on anything in particular?

Yes; those are the success rates that are the most fun, in my experience. Generally, if something only has a 5% chance of success or a 5% chance of failure, then when those thing happen, it feels cheap. So I like systems where the "best of the best" can achieve around an 80% success rate and the "worst of the worst" still has like a 20% success rate. Anything more extreme and I feel like we shouldn't be rolling, we should just take the obvious answer and get on with the game.

 

[Yaarel]

Personally, I gauge by difficulties 15, 20, 25.

Because most checks add an ability and a proficiency, there is roughly about +5 to every check even at the lowest levels.

Thus 10 is normally trivially easy.

The difficulties of 15 and 20 are the respective challenging and hard of combat math. These two are my goto numbers.

25 represents the upper extreme of human power.

The 30 is superhuman and only for the highest tiers, levels 13-16 and 17-20. At these tiers, ability and proficiency are adding roughly +10 to every skill check.